“Best practice” in accounting, financial transaction processing, order processing, inventory management, and purchasing has benefitted greatly from, and is heavily dependent on, the use of information technology. Although desktop computers have become ubiquitous in other areas of business such as, engineering, marketing, sales and general management, the benefits have been far more modest. In these areas of largely professional and managerial work, computers have been used extensively to support the work of individuals. But information technology has been more difficult to exploit in professional and managerial work that requires significant collaboration among individuals. Three general approaches have been taken to leverage technology in the service of managerial and professional work-workgroup software, workflow software, and decision support software.
Workgroup software focuses on the need for communication among the many participants in managerial and professional work processes. It can be used to breach the organizational boundaries, both within and among organizations, and is adaptable to almost any set of organizational circumstances. Such flexibility can be advantageous when the requirements for communication are poorly understood or constantly changing. However, there are costs incurred for such flexibility. The administration and operation of such applications may become quite complex. Furthermore, it is sometimes advantageous to restrict the forms that a process may take to achieve not only greater economy but increased repeatability and reliability.
Workflow software is grounded in the paper metaphor of document routing. It should be economical in its use of resources and provide high repeatability due to a more restrictive, and therefore more definitive, structure than workgroup software. However, workflow software is better suited to clerical, document processing activities than to managerial and professional work. In contrast to clerical activities in which most decision situations are well understood and can be made by a single individual, managerial and professional work often entails decisions in which a number of people need to collaborate. This essential need for collaboration is the root of the ever present meetings that managers and professionals everywhere bemoan.
Early decision support software used information technology to support individual decision makers with data retrieval and data manipulation capabilities that could significantly enhance the quality of their decisions. Recent efforts have expanded decision support for individual decisions to group settings. However, decision support software does not attempt to structure the roles played in the decision by various individuals, nor does it usually structure the interdependencies of more than a few closely related decisions.